Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
Besides the Savonarola tracts the miscellaneous religious treatises
illustrated with one or more woodcuts are very numerous. In some cases
outside models were still sought. One of the most important of these
books is the _Meditatione sopra la Passione_ attributed to S.
Bonaventura, of which two undated editions were issued, one with eight
cuts, the other with twelve, three of the additional cuts in the second
edition--the Entry into Jerusalem, Christ before Pilate, and Procession
to Calvary (see Plate XVI)--being exceptionally fine. The earlier
designer probably had the Venetian edition of 1489 before him, but used
it quite freely. Two of the three cuts in the 1494 Florentine edition of
the _Libro delli commandamenti di Dio_ of Marco del Monte S. Maria are
improved copies of those in the Venetian edition of 1486. The third cut,
which appears also in the same author's _Tabula della Salute_ (also of
1494), representing the Monte della Pieta, is copied on a reduced scale
from a large copper engraving attributed to Baccio Baldini, of which an
example is in the Print Room of the British Museum. Of the thirty-four
cuts in Cardinal Capranica's _Arte del benmorire_, eleven are imitated
from the well-known series in the German block-books.
[Illustration: XVI. FLORENCE, MISCOMINI, C. 1495
BONAVENTURA. MEDITATIONE. THE PROCESSION TO CALVARY]
For the _Rappresentazioni_ or miracle-plays in honour of various saints
originality was more imperative, and numerous cuts were designed, only a
few of which have come down to us in editions of the fifteenth century,
most being known as they survive in reprints of the second half of the
sixteenth. Our example (Plate XVII) is from an undated edition of _La
Festa di San Giovanni_, in which, as on many other titlepages, an angel
is shown above the title-cut as the speaker of the Prologue. Purely
secular literature in the shape of _Novelle_ was no doubt plentiful,
despite the influence of Savonarola, but most of it has perished,
thumbed to pieces by too eager readers. A volume of _Novelle_ at the
University Library, Erlangen, is illustrated with delightful cuts, and
others survive here and there in different libraries. Of more
pretentious quartos Angelo Politiano's _La Giostra di Giuliano di
Medici_ (first edition undated, second 1513) is very finely illustrated,
and Petrarch's _Trionfi_ (1499) has good versions of the usual six
subjects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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